Is 2005 considered vintage?

Some people consider 20 years old to be when something becomes vintage so maybe?

My last new-bike purchase was a 2003 Cannondale. I've been wondering lately if it needed to be 20 or 25 years old to be considered vintage. Not that the question keeps me awake at night. I certainly have and continue to ride and enjoy the bike and will continue doing so until I'm too old to ride or something unfortunate occurs. It was a good purchase decision back near the turn of the century.

Depends on the frame. Frames that are iconic and made a splash at the time might make the grade. The average 2005 road bike? Maybe literally vintage, probably not classic.

Not by me.

Nope. Come back in twenty years.
Until recently my "new" road bike was from 1996!
Brent

Let m = date of manufacture, and n = your age, in dog years.

If m! / (m-n)! x n! is a number large enough such that Stirling's Approximation is valid, it is worth over $50.

Otherwise, you got Pwned.

Sorry.

Vintage in my opinion can be defined differently for different people. It’s likely related to the age of a person relative to the age of an item.

As an example; I’m in my mid fifties. I have two Cannondale road bikes that are 2001 and 2004. Those years seem like just a little while ago. I was well into adulthood then. Neither one has “patina” that would show the passage of time. I haven’t felt like they’d fit in this forum, so I haven’t posted about them.

On the other hand, I’ve got a pair of 1988 Black Lightnings. I wasn’t old enough to drink (legally) when they were new. It was an extremely profound moment in time in my life. They’re equipped with components no longer found on newer bikes; Suntour derailleurs, Dia Compe brakes and downtube shifters. I did post a picture in black bike month. But even with the Handmade in USA frame I haven’t felt comfortable posting much about them in the C&V forum. Do I think they’re vintage? Absolutely.

What I’ve seen posted here on C&V as far as bikes like Peugeot, Colnago, Mercier, Motobecane, etc. seems to me like a different vibe than my older Cannondale’s.

Basically it’s the individuals own perspective.

It depends on who you ask.

Some people go strictly by a 20, 25 or whatever year age. But that age isn't codified anywhere- and it's different with different organizations and different insurance companies and government agencies.

If someone were to ask me what I think, not that anyone cares, there's a difference between an "old" bike and a "vintage" bike- and generally- we're talking about bikes with level top tubes with non-oversized tubing made before 1995. I don't use 1995 as a random "30 year" or whatever date- but Suntour went out of business in 1994.

Here's the longer, more stupid version of my theory... you probably know the word "vintage" is derived from the term meaning "wine harvest." The idea is that there are good years for wine and not good years for wine- not necessarily how old the wine is. So if the soil is right and there's the perfect balance of sun and rain and the temperature produces the best wine ever for the 1969 wine season- making the 1969 Chateau de GoldenBoy one of the finest vintages ever. But 5 years before- if there was a flood and dumped a load of sewerage on the vineyards and it was cold and crappy- making the 1964 one of the worst years... even though it's 5 years older, it's a significantly worse wine. I think the idea is more the properties of the "harvest" that make a wine, bike, car... etc desirable- not the age.

To muddle the waters a bit, this is "CLASSIC and Vintage," hedging the whole thing to bikes that are made in that "classic" sort of idiom- irrespective of when they were made.

On top of all that... newer bikes are generally more appreciated by younger people and "vintage" bikes are generally more appreciated by "vintage" people- and as these people drop out of the hobby- the older stuff becomes less appreciated. So while old people might roll their eyes at the idea of a 2005 Trek Madone being considered "vintage," without younger people into the "vintage" hobby and forums- it's going to get awfully sparse in here.

I tend to follow the ideas suggest in the vintage and antique car market. Vintage becomes so at 25 years of age. Antique, 50 years. There are, of course, other opinions but that is my guideline after finding, restoring and riding hundreds of vintage bikes and to me, once 25 years old they are all vintage.

On the other hand, at close to 80 years old, I think of myself as an antique. And, as some might know, I go to the dump frequently, hoping to find an old, I mean vintage, road bike. Sometimes I do find something cool. Sometimes just an old but in great shape and really warm Eagles winter coat with an annoying hood...

At a few years older than you and as a reformed dump picker, I applaud your persistence. Wearing an Eagles jacket is somewhat questionable though.

Never even gave that a thought. Are there issues with the Eagles?

My dump visit purpose is to salvage that which I find salvageable and of interest to me. A day or so, before or after, finding the jacket, I picked this up at another landfill site near my lake cottage. Solid brass, I think, and really cool. Glad to find it...


And sometime around the same time, my daughter joined me in a visit to the dump. This is what she found tucked into an old Bible...

You clearly visit much higher quality dumps than I ever did. That lamp is probably worth mega$ . Things that hideous usually are.

LOL, I have an '05 Bianchi S9 which I consider 'modern'.

20 years seems right especially given the pace of change in bikes.

I have a Cannondale R900 from early 2000’s…aluminum…triple…Campy…23mm tires…no hydraulic disc brakes…no electronic shifting…. All that makes me feel like it’s fair to call it vintage. You can’t buy bikes with that package new anymore.

I've always thot that whole C&V thing has a whiff of delusional elitism about it. Not particularly unusual since it's prevalent in most of the "old thing" crowds. It's a convenient rationalization of what is easily typified as an irrational activity. I personally cannot define my preferences beyond some nebulous aesthetic formed in the mid previous century. That and I'm cheap.

A 20 year old bottle of turpentine, forgotten on a shelf, does not maketh a vintage wine.

The parts I use to rebuild "vintage" frames to make them feel "modern" are older than that. I'm pretty sure that means I am old. I'm not sure if I'm vintage or not.

More seriously, we have a lot of discussions about what makes something classic, vintage, etc. I've offered a number of opinions on this, probably each one contradicting those that I've offered before, so why not one more? It seems to me that the term "vintage" is usually intended to convey that the item being described as "vintage" will be in some way "better" to some group of people for some reason by virtue of its age or period of origin. The reason may be nostalgia. It may be because said group is a bunch of curmudgeons who are convinced "they don't make 'em like they used to." Or it may be something else. This part is elusive, but I think that the item has to be substantially different from a current or "recent" versions of the same item. For instance, you can't really have a "vintage" Bic pen because Bic pens have hardly changed at all in 75 years. A 75 year old Bic pen is just old.

With that in mind, I'd like to suggest that one way to approach this is to ask whether the same basic technology used in the candidate item is still in use today. There is going to be some gray area here, but I think this has possibilities. For the sake of discussion, I'd like to ask whether the basic technology might be used on a mid-level bike today. As a point of reference, I offer the 2025 Specialized Allez Sport, and I'm going to argue that a bike component doesn't contribute to a bike's "vintage" character if the same basic technology is used on the Allez Sport. Consider a few points of comparison.

Frame: Aluminum -- Not vintage

You can make a strong case that round tubed aluminum frames are vintage, but hydro-formed aluminum is still going strong in the market place. Carbon fiber hasn't filtered down to mid-level bikes yet.

Shifting: Mechanical, indexed -- Not vintage

The 2025 Allez has 10-speed cable actuated indexed shifting, which is not substantially different from the shifting mechanism on a typically 2005 road bike. When electronic shifting trickles down to Tiagra, I will accept that mechanical shifting is vintage.

Brakes: Mechanical, dual pivot rim brakes -- Kind of vintage

The 2025 Allez Sport has hydraulic disc brakes. This one might be open to debate because you can still get caliper brakes at the Dure-Ace level, but generally speaking, even Tiagra-level bikes are spec'd with disc brakes these days.

Pedals: clipless -- Not vintage

Clipless pedals have been around for a long time, but have they changed in any substantial way? If so, I'm not aware of it.

Headset: External cup threadless -- Vintage!

This one kind of surprised me, but a quick glance at a few sub-$2000 road bikes shows that integrated, even tapered, headsets are typical.

Quick release wheels -- Becoming vintage?

I might be stretching my argument thin here, but the 2025 Allez Sport has thru axles. Thru axles! On a Tiagra equipped bike! This is what disc brake users are coming to expect.


So, looking at all that, I still tend to think a bike made in 2005 isn't vintage quite yet, but it's definitely getting there.

To compare with the 2025 Allez above, here's my 2005 Specialized Allez Elite Triple.
Saw it on CL cheap and noticed the aero seat tube. In the catalog for that year, only the metal matrix, made in USA, Allez had the aero seat tube.
And a polished frame? Had to get it.


First VIRTUAL 56 frame I had seen labeled LARGE.
BAD NEWS was that it was A1 aluminum, probably Taiwan, and chrome paint.
Still too cheap to walk away from.

In the near future, we should probably be ready to consider any bike without "pedal assist" vintage.

The OP (who hasn’t replied to this thread) lists a 2005 Gary Fisher Marlin in their sig:



I stand by my “no.”

That's not entirely true- the older BIC pens have undergone some changes- the tip that inserts into the pen shaft used to be metal- additionally, the ball used to be stainless steel instead of the fancy tungsten used now. Additionally, the cap was changed to have a hole in it around 30 years ago.

Now that being said, I wish I would have hung on to all the old Parker Jotter pens we had all over the place when I was a kid. I still have one of my Grandfather's old Parker Big Red pens- and I bought one on eBay so I could use one and not flip **** if it got lost or stolen.

Vintage is an interesting concept. It has no clear definition except that it is marked by being from a bygone era.

Since technology seemingly is on an upsloping curve perhaps vintage periods inch closer toward the present.

Or perhaps it is simply a function of our desire to remain younger in our mind than in years that we avoid thinking of the 2000s and 1990s as vintage!

That said, 2005 bikes do not seem vintage in my mind.

I have to admit to being a bit surprised at what makes the cut here as "vintage" on my earlier visits.
Panasonic. Really? Okay.....
That one is still kind of doubtful as vintage with me, which probably says a lot about my age.
I still have much trouble with the idea of a MTB being vintage in any form. See the last line above.
My current favorite ride is an 83' manufacture year, and to me, it just barely makes the cut as vintage. I suspect it was factory built for the express purpose of using up old and arcane french bicycle parts. The r/d on it looks like something out of the early 60's, as does the f/d.

I still get weirded out on discussions involving "patina" which in more rational discourse is a sign of a huge lack of care and up-keep.
The same discussions apply to cars, guns, camera's, fishing reels, etc, etc, so we're not alone- not by any stretch of the imagination.
All of which is just my opinion, which actually means very little in the grand scheme of things.

-D.S.